Monday Links: Everyone is a Writer

The Internet can’t keep a secret. It’s April Fool’s Day, and my feed is filled with gotcha articles and subsequent chatter about them. Thus far, Magda Sawon has announced she’s taking over Gagosian’s space uptown, ARTINFO has run a feature of art stars under the age of 6, and Hyperallergic has a piece on an exhibition that puts Jews in a box. That last one’s an actual story, but if you see a post over there written today by “The Editors”, watch out! [The Internet]

Jerry Saltz surveys the New York landscape and observes that the rich rule from 40,000 miles away, and fewer people are going to galleries. “I’ve tried to keep overhyped careers in check, and had no effect whatsoever.” he writes. “In fact, so many shows in so many places mean that we now have an overload of writing about art. Joseph Beuys said, “Everyone is an artist.” Now everyone actually is a writer. Like exhibitions that can’t get traction, commentary also has a hard time gaining a foothold, unless you yourself enter the arena of spectacle, becoming something of a spectacle yourself.” This is a pretty great summation of some of the writerly issues, and the piece as a whole tackles a whole lot more. It’s a must read. [Vulture]

Greg Allen responds to AFC contributor Eva Heisler’s review of Jacob Kassay’s show at Art : Concept, fleshing out an argument for why the paintings are less deflection—as she claims—than they are redaction. It’s a great response to the original review, though I have to say I don’t share Allen’s love for Kassay. It seems there’s an awful lot of intellectual resources dedicated to backing paintings that, on their own, don’t have much to say. It’s a very particular kind of viewer that’s going to find interest in comparing two identical press releases, just to glean the knowledge that the following has been redacted: “Dates, “New York,” “collaboration,” and “works on paper,” but also things like “industrial,” “chemical,” “conceptual,” and every reference to photography and his monochrome and mirror forebears. Also blacked out: any privileging of “the perception of the painterly surface,” and particulars of how “the artist carefully keeps control of their reproductions.”

whoa

This kind of parsing has some intellectual rewards, but I’m not convinced Kassay’s work isn’t engaging in a certain amount of navel gazing. Kassay is asking us to reflect on his own motives, and while that’s fair, they’re not so interesting that I wouldn’t rather indulge in a painting made for the virtues of painting. [Greg.org]

Blake Gopnik thinks the feverish pace of museum exhibitions might not be a sign of their good health. [Art Newspaper]